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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, which was next in my scribbled notes. In the shotgun wedding ballots about which we have already heard, which are the subject of new clause 1, people are told that their friendly local housing association will come in and provide many wonderful innovations—many of which do not happen—and that the housing association is small, local and friendly. What happens? That process is followed by constant amalgamation. We can see from the experience of the past 11 years that those housing associations are not in the business of building houses or providing a friendly local service. It is one constant story of amalgamation. The business plan of housing associations—I will be corrected if I am wrong—seems to be based on constant merger and on taking over council housing stock and smaller housing associations. Two or three housing associations operate in my constituency, and their head offices are in cities that are miles away. They have little local offices that are open a couple of afternoons a week, if we are lucky. If I contact them, as an MP, or a councillor contacts them, we get answerphones or end up ringing through to Rotherham, Bradford, Leeds and all sorts of places. They could be on the other side of the moon as far as the tenants of Chesterfield are concerned. When those properties belonged to the council, all people had to do was walk for 10 minutes or take a bus for a few minutes into the town centre. They could then bang on the door and go to see the council housing department. They could also vote the council out, as we were reminded earlier. That enabled those tenants to get some sort of response. A large chunk of this Bill—the clauses that we might not get on to because of the time constraints—sets up the housing regulator, Oftenant. Most people agree with that because, contrary to what the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich said, housing associations have a poor record of relating to their tenants and being accountable. Housing associations have not delivered the alternative in the wonderful mixed market that we have heard so much about. They have almost completely failed to fill the gap. New clause 8 asks for a level playing field. All we want is the same treatment as housing associations have. If the 10,000 council tenants in Chesterfield were to switch to a housing association, that association would immediately get to keep all the rents. If they vote to stay with the council in Chesterfield—tenants in Camden did that four times last year—the council loses millions of pounds in rent: £3 million last year, £4 million this year, and £5 million next year. The sum is going up constantly by inflation plus, but the plus goes straight to the Government and not into housing in Chesterfield. Tenants who are with the council rather than the housing association have no access to the social housing grant. They cannot borrow money. The Minister is very pleased about that. In the letter to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby, which has already been referred to and which was dated 29 February, the Minister makes a big point on the first page:"““A public body borrowing from a bank is still taking on new public borrowing.””" The Government do not want public bodies borrowing. No one has explained that theory of economics to me, whether it concerns hospital wards, new schools or housing. Why do council tenants have to pay higher rents so that people can borrow money in the private sector to build a house? Why is that good, whereas if the council borrows the money more cheaply as a large public institution, that is bad? I do not understand the logic. We are asking for a level playing field. The fourth option, which is a short-term provision, does not give councils special privileges. It merely stops discrimination against nearly 2.5 million council tenants who have voted no, sometimes three or four times, and want to stay with the council. If the Government are in favour of mixed tenure, diversity and democracy, surely they want to offer a level playing field rather than condemning 2.5 million council tenants in Conservative areas such as Poole, in Plaid Cymru areas, in Labour areas and in Liberal Democrat areas—in areas across the country and the political spectrum—to a constant spiral of decline. The only answer that the Government ever come back with is that there will have to be another ballot, and another £500,000 blown on a failed ballot intended to force people to opt for a transfer. That is simply not acceptable. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby went into some of the details of new clause 1, so I shall not repeat them. It is essentially about tenants' ballots, and the fact that they should be fair, open and democratic. One question asked from the Conservative Front Bench was whether, if we support the new clause, it means that we are aiming to prevent stock transfer. It means that only if having a fair, open, democratic free ballot stops stock transfer. The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich said that a couple of million tenants have voted for stock transfer, but in most cases that was only because they had a shotgun to their head. They had no choice, because they were being told, ““You either transfer or your houses fall apart around your ears, and you will not get any new ones built. If you transfer, it will be the land of milk and honey.”” The ballots that took place were often rigged, as I shall explain in a moment.